One of the biggest challenges to not living in the United States is the additional wait time for all Apple technology releases. For some reason, we’re always a few months behind. So I’ve only had my iPad (64GM, 3G enabled) since June. During that time, I’ve realized a few key things about it.

1) Reading books on a backlit screen is challenging. Indoors, it’s fine. Outdoors, there’s glare that only gets worse in bright sunlight. The saving grace is reading at night in the dark — then the backlit screen is wonderful.

2) The iPad is very heavy compared to the other e-readers I’ve tried (Sony, Kobo, Nook, & Kindle). And heavy is the last thing you want in a portable reading device, as it reminds you too much of a p-book.

3) It’s totally fun to play free downloadable games on it. (Many hours of mindless distraction later, I still keep gravitating back to solitare.)

4) It holds a ton of music and video, and syncs my calendar, contacts, and multiple email accounts. Plus it can take notes and access web pages, not to mention the 200,000+ apps that do things I didn’t even know were missing from my life. The recent firmware upgrade has added some nice functionality.

The iPad was never meant to be an e-book reader only. The iBookstore is a good add-on for Apple, but it will never make them much money. The publishing industry doesn’t need to worry as much as the music industry did about iTunes (that was a game changer).

What the iPad really does is make laptops and mini-computers obsolete. It’s a completely new way to interact with information; iPod Touches were just the starting point. With the next generation of iPads coming next year, Apple is poised to dominate again. The other options in the market (Galaxy Tab, etc.) just reinforce that it isn’t about reading – it’s about portable connectivity and entertainment. Makes me feel all Star Trekker just thinking about it.

UPDATE – July 13, 2010 - Well, it’s happened already. Sony just broke the $100 e-reader barrier. Looks like there will be e-readers for everyone this holiday season! – R.S.

May 1st was a big day for the e-reader market. That’s when the Kobo, at $149, became the cheapest and most stripped down e-reader you could buy. Soon after, Borders started selling a competitive but cheaper reader, the Aluratek Libre for only $119.99. Now Barnes & Noble has a version of the Nook at $149, and Amazon Kindle promptly slashed its price to $189. Sony, not to be left out of the fun, has also dropped their prices. What’s really going on here? Is it simply competitive pricing, or something more?

Let’s look to the printer and toner pricing structure for a possible answer. Each day, printers are sold with more features, and at lower prices. The catch is the toner: It continues to be ridiculously expensive. I break out in hives when I have to buy toner cartridges for my colour printer. I even purchased a new printer once because it was cheaper than buying the toner! Don’t worry, I found the old one a new home at a recycling charity. Seems e-books are the new toner, and e-readers the new printers.

The first e-readers were expensive ($359 for the first Kindle), and e-books were cheap (typically about $9.99 per book). The publishers didn’t like it, but they had to live within a model where the retailer set the price. When Apple’s iPad launched this spring they forced a change that swept the industry, and now retailers have less discount wiggle room. Not surprisingly, e-books prices have shot up to the $12 range today.

The only lever left to support the rapid rise of digital book sales (and save the publishing industry) is for e-reader prices to continue to drop. Cheaper means much more accessible, and the number of people who own an e-reader will explode. Back to my printer and toner analogy, almost anyone can buy a colour printer these days, but the toner is a whole other story. We need to keep an eye on e-book pricing, and take bets on which e-readers will survive the price wars (the iRex has already filed for bankruptcy protection in the USA), and which ones will go down with last year’s colour printer models.

As Bette Davis/Margo Channing said in the movie, All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!”